Ladies and gentlemen, good morning or good afternoon, depending from where you are following this webcast. Welcome to the u-blox first half 2023 results presentation. I'm Rafael Duarte, newly joined Head of Investor Relations at u-blox. CEO, Stephan Zizala, and CFO, Roland Jud, will first present the results, and later will be available for a Q&A session. For the Q&A session, we ask you kindly to test your audio equipment beforehand and follow the instructions in the webcast platform. Before we start, I would like to go through the disclaimers for this event. This presentation contains certain forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements reflect the current views of management and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors that may cause actual results, performance, or achievements of the group should differ materially from those expressed or implied herein.
Should such risk or uncertainty materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in this presentation. u-blox is providing the information in this presentation as of this date, and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in it as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Without further ado, I hand it over to Stephan. Please go ahead, Stephan.
Thank you, Rafael. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, good morning. Before we start, I would like to welcome our new Head of Investor Relations, Rafael Duarte. Rafael comes with 13 years experience in investor relations and two years in corporate treasury. At the same time, I would like to thank Gitta Jansen, who was instrumental for u-blox Investor Relations for a very long time. She will put her future focus on ESG topics. Our external members of the IR, IR team, Doris Rudischhauser and Lena Cati, you know already. All the contact details are at the end of the presentation. Let's start on slide five. u-blox achieved strong results in the first half of 2023. Our revenue grew double digit by 15% at constant currencies. Adjusted EBIT reached CHF 62 million, with a respective EBIT margin of 18.6%. Adjusted net profit amounted to CHF 48 million.
These results, achieved in the first half, are important, as they come after a very strong 2022, in an overall weak macroeconomic and semiconductor market environment. Compared to the first half of 2022, we also increased the value of new projects we won, our design wins, in the automotive and industrial businesses, which should contribute to our results in the next years. We also signed an important partnership with the company Orbcomm, which I will talk about, more about in a minute. If we now move to slide six, let me shed some light into our revenue performance. As mentioned, we achieved strong results despite a high comparison base last year. If we consider the last three years, our revenue almost doubled. Volumes played a big role in this growth year, mainly in our focus markets of automotive and industrial applications.
It is also important to mention that a part of the revenue originate from the 2022 order backlog, when effects of the global semiconductor supply chain shortage were still paramount. We will explore this topic later in the presentation. On slide seven, we break down our revenue into certain aspects. By region, we saw the strongest development in Europe and Asia Pacific, while the Americas was weak due to lower demand in healthcare and consumer applications. We had a strong growth in our core markets, automotive and industrial, a lot from the 2022 order backlog. We saw continued weak performance in consumer, following the trends in the industry. Lastly, in terms of product types, both modules and chip grew, while chips grew faster. Before I hand over to Roland for the financials, let us look at our gross margin development.
Adjusted gross profit reached CHF 156 million in H1 2023. The respective gross profit margin was 46.8%, from 48.9% in H1 2022. In H1 2023, we saw the positive impact of our long-term agreements with customers, not only in the volume growth, but also in quite stable prices. The decline in the gross margin was mostly due to changes in the product mix we sold compared to one year ago. We assume that this trend will continue in H2 2023. Now I stop here and hand over to Roland for the financials.
Thank you, Stephan. A warm welcome also from my side. As Stephan already went through revenue and gross profit, I will cover now the operating expense, which makes up then our EBIT of CHF 62 million. On the left-hand side, you see a graph about R&D expenses, which in H1 2023, reached CHF 60 million and grew slightly faster than revenues. As a percentage of revenues, R&D expenses grew only slightly compared to the comparable period in 2022 to 18%. In the middle, you see a graph about SG&A. SG&A expenses remained flat in the period 2023, with CHF 44 million. As a percentage of revenue, it declined by 130 basis points to 10.2%.
Here we see clearly our operating leverage capabilities, we were able to manage and keep our SG&A flat despite the growing revenues. This, at the end, leads finally to an adjusted EBIT of the CHF 62 million. As mentioned by Stephan, we are very pleased to have achieved this EBIT in the first half year, despite exceptional results already achieved a year before. EBIT margin remains at a very good level of 18.6%. Let me now shed some light on R&D. Please keep in mind that these figures on these slides are IFRS figures to make the comparison a little bit simpler. Let's start with the chart on the left side. Here we show how R&D accounting works. As discussed many times, the R&D expenses you see in the P&L excludes capitalization of R&D costs and includes amortization.
These are the bars in the middle of the left chart. CHF 20 million we capitalized in the first half year, 2023, and we have CHF 15 million amortization of capitalized R&D costs. The orange column you see is CHF 67 million, and it shows how much R&D costs we have had in the first half year of 2023. If you look at the chart to the right, we have run the same exercise again for previous years. You see here that the difference between the two bars, R&D expense and R&D costs, fluctuate over time. Depending on the project at a given time, capitalization and amortization vary, and generating this difference. Let's now have a look at the complete income statement. We have grouped some lines to make it easier to follow.
In the right left column, you find the P&L for the first half year, 2023, according to IFRS, with the CHF 332 million revenues, with an EBIT of CHF 58.5 million, and a net profit of CHF 46.1 million. In the columns on the right, we show the corresponding adjusted figures. The adjusted are the usual ones, as there are CHF 1.8 million for share-based payments in relation with our employee share option program. This time, the IAS 19 has nearly no impact, and the amortization of intangible asset acquired in the adjustment is CHF 1.4 million. This is in total CHF 3.2 million for the EBIT adjusted and CHF 1.8 million for EBITDA. The financial result was negative this year, mainly due to foreign exchange, which was driven by the U.S. dollar.
We see here a foreign exchange loss of CHF 3.4 million from last period, with CHF 3.1 million foreign exchange gain. About two-thirds of this foreign exchange loss is realized, and one-third belongs to unrealized foreign exchange losses. In terms of taxes, the adjusted tax rate for the first half year is 16.4%. This, at the end, leads then to a net profit of CHF 48.3 million, practically in line with the first half year's result. On slide 13, you see now something about cash generation. Free cash flow in the first half year was negative by CHF 13 million. As you can see easily on the chart, the increase of net working capital was the main reason for this negative result. Due to highly monthly revenue in June, trade receivables increased-...
Besides, also, inventory, inventories increased in the first half year compared to December. This has a negative impact on net working capital, or lack the net working capital increase, so that we have to face net working capital changes of CHF 67 million in the first half year. Operating cash flow in the first half year 2023 was CHF 10.5 million plus. Net cash using and investing activities at the end for the cash flow was mostly investments into R&D, with CHF 21 million, and stood at CHF 23 million cash out. Slightly lower than the CHF 24 million in 2022. Moving to slide 14 and the balance sheet. Also here, I'd like to highlight two important items in our balance sheet, the working capital and our net cash position.
In the last slide, we talked about the working capital from a cash flow perspective. Here, the balance sheet, we see a similar picture. When compared to year-end 2022, the biggest variation is trade receivables, driven by the high monthly revenues in June 2023. Also inventories increased, which amounts now to CHF 126 million, versus CHF 118 million in December 2022. Last but not least, at the right side, we show our net cash position. We still continue to have a solid net cash position of CHF 55 million in June 2023. With that, I hand over to Stephan again.
Thank you, Roland, for going through the financials. Let me give you now some business background to the numbers. In the first six months, we made really good progress in winning new projects. Our design win volume was significantly higher than in the first half of 2022. One example is a double-digit million design win for autonomous driving with a leading car manufacturer, ramping up in 2026 and later. This performance on winning new projects in our industrial and automotive target markets will be the base for our long-term growth. Of course, there needs to be new products, too. One good example is our new module for demanding automotive applications, combining advanced Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology with the automotive module requirements. We add new customer projects, new products. We will be even better if we have strong partners.
In the last six months, we formalized our partnership with GMV for automated driving. This will enable our automotive customers to develop safe, automated driving systems faster and more efficient. We also expanded our correction service to new areas. This will help to improve the accuracy of our positioning solutions. Just this week, we announced a partnership with Orbcomm for satellite IoT connectivity. Let me explain this a bit more in depth. The market demand for asset tracking or agriculture is very simple. Customers want to connect those devices to the cloud wherever they are on the planet. Well, cellular can also do part of the job. About 10% of the Earth's surface has cellular network coverage. What about the other 90%? The answer is not new: satellite communication. However, the problem is also not new. Satellite connectivity equipment is very expensive. Here comes our solution.
We can combine satellite and cellular communication in a single module. This means we run the software needed to communicate with satellites on our cellular chips. There's no need for a dedicated satellite communication chip anymore. To enable this, the position of the receiver needs to be known, and therefore, we add a GNSS chip in the module. The market potential for this is significant, as the demand for global IoT coverage is predicted to grow with about 40% on average in the next years. In summary, jointly with our partner, Orbcomm, which provides the complete system, we will enable a multi-million dollar market. Moving to slide 20, where we will talk about the outlook for the business. Although we report in Swiss francs, our business is exposed to foreign currencies. On revenue, for example, is about 85% generated in U.S. dollars, the rest in euros.
The chart on the left side shows the development of our main currencies compared to the rates used in the 2023 guidance issued in March. You can see that especially the U.S. dollar lost value versus the Swiss franc. The table on the right side shows the exchange rate sensitivity in our business. It says, for example, that a 10% weakening in the U.S. dollar causes a -9% negative impact in our revenue. On the next slide, I'm going to show you what that means for our guidance. If you start on the left side on the slide, you will see three bars for each guidance KPI: revenue, EBITDA margin, and EBIT margins. Let's start with revenue. The light gray bar represents the guidance issued in March this year.
By converting this to today's situation, we derive the same guidance with actuals for the first half of the year, and with the current exchange rates for the second half of the year, which is 9% lower. From the lower range of the converted guidance, we established a new guidance for 2023. Apart from exchange rate, the reduction of lead times and more careful ordering to adjust to the overstocking effect, are expected to negatively impact revenue in Q3. We expect that this will improve in Q4 2023 again. The picture is similar when we look at profitability, where exchange rate movements and changes in the product mix were the main reason for the guidance update. Here on slide 22, we bring the overview of the new revised guidance.
It reflects transparently the current expectation. We have internally, and it is our best view into 2023. It's worthwhile to mention that currently, we already have about 90% of the lower end of the guidance as orders in our system. It's important, therefore, to reinforce that this change in guidance does not reflect any change in our competitive advantage or industry dynamics. We not only haven't lost any major customer, but we won new businesses because we are competitive and we are innovative. If we move now to slide 23. Here we have our ambitions as communicated last year during Capital Market Day. Note so far, I haven't mentioned anything regarding 2024 and beyond. While we see the third quarter as a low point and an improvement in the fourth quarter, the visibility is low to talk about next year.
We plan to hold a Capital Market Day in November. This will be the best opportunity to reflect on the cycle we are going through, and at that stage, I will also have the opportunity to reflect on my first year as u-blox CEO, and our plans for the future development of this great company. To conclude, I would like to have a few words recapping why I'm so convinced about u-blox's great future. U-blox will benefit from global mega trends. Climate change and resource scarcity will require that we make best use of our resources. Solutions for asset tracking or positioning in autonomous vehicles will directly benefit from this trend. Demographic change is clearly visible already now. Solutions for remote, wireless, connected healthcare equipment will become widespread. Urbanization will drive up the need for automated parking, car sharing, delivery services, micro mobility.
All those applications need solutions for exact positioning and wireless connectivity. The digital transformation is everywhere. The fourth and fifth industrial revolution will require remote monitoring and operation of industrial equipment, autonomous indoor vehicles, virtual reality, and so on. Solutions for indoor positioning and outdoor positioning, wireless connectivity, will be key for this digital transformation. We provide solutions, to enable our customers to determine their position precisely, have a reliable wireless connection to the cloud, combined with more edge computing capabilities. Our solutions are reliable and safe. This means they do what they are supposed to do, and they are secure. This means it's hard to compromise them. Our solutions are easy to implement and designed to work for thousands of customers. In summary, u-blox's future is bright because we enable mega trends of our society. This concludes the presentation part of this webcast.
We are now ready for question and answers. Rafael, do we have any questions?
We do. Thank you, Stephan and Roland, for the presentation. We now start with the Q&A session. If you wanna ask a question, please follow the instructions in the webcast platform on the left side of the page. Just a quick reminder, please check your audio equipment before you join the Q&A. The first question comes from Christoph Greil from AWP. Please go ahead. Christoph, are you there?
He's not ready yet, but maybe we can go ahead with the next one.
Okay, we move on the queue. Christoph, if you wanna ask a question, join the queue again. The next question is from Harry Blaiklock, Blaiklock from UBS. Please go ahead, Harry.
We have one from the call, which is already ready.
Okay, that will be Emrah Basic. Is that correct?
Yes, that's correct. Thank you. Can you hear me?
We can hear you well. Thank you.
Okay, thanks a lot. Yeah, just I have a couple of one. I'll just go with the first one. You already gave some indication on Q3. I assume that July and August have not developed that great yet, or they have not developed great. Like, was there a reason why you did not communicate your new guidance a month ago already with your preliminary results?
I will take it?
Yeah, you can take it.
We are in a situation, we have, we have reduced lead times to market standards. So we come from minimum order times of more than 50 weeks, and in a March timeframe, we reduced lead times to below 20 weeks, even, down to 12 weeks. This means, on the other hand, that there is a low visibility because customers start ordering very late. That's one point we have to consider. And then, this was at this point in time, when we did the revenue update, it was still too early to come to any conclusion of our on the second half of 2023. We observed what was going on in July and beginning of August and came to the conclusion that's now the time to act.
All right. Thank you very much. The second one would be on, on your net working capital. What is your, what is the expectation or assumption for the rest of the year? Can we expect a similar seasonality as, as a year ago for the second half?
Maybe I can take this one. Depends on what you, what you are thinking of in the second half. Now, in the second half of 2022, we saw a quite a big increase of inventories. This is today not foreseeable as such, so I would just, we are working hard to improve net working capital in the second half of 2023 again, to make it better than-
Okay.
The first half.
Okay, thank you. Then just the last quick one, very detailed one. Your amortization of acquired intangibles was not, I didn't see it in the document. Is that approximately the same number as last year, between CHF 1 million-CHF 2 million?
The amortization of?
Of acquired intangibles.
Yeah, that's a similar number. It's the CHF 1.4, roughly the CHF 1.4 million you find in adjusted numbers.
Okay. Okay, thanks a lot. Thank you. That was it.
Thank you. The next question is from Serge Rotzer from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Okay, good afternoon, gentlemen. Basically, I didn't want to ask a question, but I had some troubles to manage your webcast, to be honest. Well, now I'm live. A question here, why didn't you came earlier with a trading update? I'm really wondering, you know. Here also the follow-up question, at what time the board of directors accepted the first six months result? Because at that time, you are obliged to came with a trading update.
Hello, Serge. I think the first part of the question I answered. Let me start with the second part of the question. The board of directors accepted this guidance update yesterday.
Okay, got it. Probably back to the net working capital, as you expect a key decline, I understand that some is due to FX, but still, you- you're also operationally de- declining in, in total sales and volume. Net working capital should do much better now, isn't it? Inventory should go down, and also the management of the, of the, of the receivables should come, should help that you really can, can improve your, your, your free cash flow by the end of the year, or is, what is wrong in my assumptions?
There is nothing wrong in your assumptions, as such. It's, as you also know, predicting net working capital is, maybe one of the challenging things in, in accounting, because there are so many parameters who, who influence that. Yes, it's for sure, as I said before, the, to again, make the inventory 3x as high as at the beginning, as we did in 2023, this will not happen.
You have a clear idea of the EBITDA, point one, p oint two, CapEx should not increase, point thre, inventory should go down, point three, you said you had difficulties to, to, to invoice the money by the end of June, so probably you can push this forward for December. I don't see why visibility is low to guide a little bit more on free cash flow. What is that unpredicted effect or?
No, no, no, no. First of all, I said, the monthly sales in June created a high receivable number. This, of course, can happen again.
You tell me that it could be back and loaded.
Yeah.
It's 30, 30 days, payables, then, you risk again, that free cash flow could come under pressure. Is this what you're telling me?
30 days, No, 30 days receivables means, the receivable number is depending on the last month. If you have a very high month, as we have in June, you have correspondingly high receivables, because what you sell in June, invoice in June, you never get paid in June already. This difference, this makes a difference.
Yeah, I understood it. You expect again, high deliveries?
No.
The end of the quarter.
No.
Or November, December?
No. What I said is, I said, "It's difficult to predict," and therefore, I have an expectation, yes, but this could be wrong.
Okay, that's fair. Many thanks. Good luck for the second half.
Up to the next question. Let's try again with, Harry Blaiklock. Harry, are you there?
Hi there. Can you hear me?
Yes. Hi, Harry.
Sorry about that. I was on the webcast, but it didn't seem to work. I got cut out as well, so you might have missed a few minutes. Apologies if I am repeating any questions. First one is just, I was wondering if you could provide a bit more color on your comments around pricing. You mentioned there's no significant inflationary impact. What does that mean you're experiencing? Is that some level of pricing, pricing press- pressure, or not at all? Also link that, how do you expect pricing to progress through this year and into 2024?
Well, we mentioned earlier that we have long-term agreements in place, especially for the first, which covers especially the first half year of 2023. This we mentioned, if I remember right, even already in March. Those long-term agreements obviously help on the volume, but also on the pricing side, to have stability. Therefore, we didn't see any huge price exposure. Yeah.
Okay. Got it. Are you able to provide any figure around what proportion of revenues are covered by long-term agreement?
Sorry, I didn't get the last part of your sentence. Sorry for this.
Are you able to provide any, any indications around what proportion of revenues are covered by long-term agreements, even if it's just ballpark, like, rough, rough number?
This I can't. What I can provide is, what I mentioned before, that if you would take the lower end of our guidance, about 90% of this would be covered with orders which we have currently in our systems, and we still have a few months to go in this year.
Okay. Then on, on gross margin, I, I accept that that's mainly driven by some, some effects, but mainly, changes in product mix. Could you provide some details on that? Is that high module sales without your chip set, higher cellular, cellular, or what's, what's the driver of that product mix change having a negative impact on gross margin?
Yes. This change came mainly from a higher share of cellular.
Okay. Got it. One, one more question, if I may. I know you can't provide exact guidance around next year, but can you give any kind of indication on the shape of recovery into 2024? I know you've already mentioned that Q3 is likely to be the bottom, but are you expecting a sharp recovery or is it kind of more gradual?
I mean, at this stage, our visibility goes until end of 2023, and this we reflected in our guidance.
... What I can say with confidence is that nothing changed in terms of the fundamentals for us in the industry. The, I, I tried to highlight this towards the end of the presentation. The structural demand for our products, driven by those mega trends, is absolutely intact. Therefore, for me, it's just a question of timing, and I cannot assess, at this point in time, 2024.
Fair enough. Perfect. Thanks very much for your answer.
Thank you. The next question in the queue is for Torsten Sauter from Kepler.
Yes, good afternoon, gentlemen. Well, some of my questions have been answered, but, like, maybe, I would still like to insist a little bit on the 2024 situation and the shape of the recovery. I mean, you've continued hiring, investing in R&D, investing in net working capital throughout H1, right? Just to, to have a feel how you approach the crisis, are you willing to keep investing and tolerate a low result, as implied in the guidance for the second half? I mean, like, what's, what, what's your, what's your thinking there, conceptually, to, to, to approach this crisis? Then, as a second question, if I may, you said you don't see major changes to fundamentals and to the, to the industry, but we've, we've seen major consolidation in your space.
Can you maybe give us a feel how you see yourself affected by M&A in the sector and how... Yeah. Anyway, maybe I, I stop here.
Yeah. Thank you, Torsten. It's it's also good because two questions I will be able to remember, hopefully. The first that regarding, regarding, or regarding the, the, the second question about M&A. Well, I, I do not want to speculate. Obviously, there, there, there is M&A ongoing in, in our sector, which is also good because it's a highly attractive sectors. The products are needed for IoT. The products, I mean, that's probably the, the, the really good thing about the semiconductor crisis, everybody now knows how important to many key trends in our society semiconductor solutions will be. So therefore, it's no wonder that there's a lot ongoing. We feel very well with our plans, and so there's no change from our side on, on, on, on the M&A side.
Now, looking, looking into 2024 really is, is difficult at this point in time, because, as mentioned before, we did a regular assessment of our business. We had certain assumptions when the business will come back. We knew that we had low visibility and, therefore, when we had the fact together in August, we updated the guidance. If I look on this, obviously, the visibility for Q3 is better than for Q4. That's also clear. We have the opinion that Q3 will be the low point, and we will see improvement in Q4. I do not want to speculate now at this point in time about a steep recovery in Q1. That's, in my opinion, unfortunately, but in my opinion, really too early.
Can I ask... Sorry, I mean, insist, what's the strategy from your side facing such an event, right? I mean, are you willing to sacrifice on OpEx? You made, again, you made hirings, you have continued investing in R&D on a, virtually unchanged trajectory. I mean, how do you approach this crisis at all from an internal point of view?
First, first, first of all, it, you're absolutely right, and we, we also said this before. Obviously, we are taking measures, and we, we, we, we will delay hirings, we will-- but we will not stop our, our, our effort to grow because we are absolutely convinced that what we do, both on the R&D side and also on the sales and marketing side, will lead to the growth, the structural growth in the future. No doubt, we will slow down in certain aspects where we are sure that we can afford a certain delay in further ramp up of costs. On the other cost side, of course, we will manage very carefully. Roland already mentioned net working capital is for sure a focus topic for us, where we will look into this.
We are taking measure. We are not just continuing as if we would have been perfectly on plan. This would not be appropriate. Torsten, did I answer your question or otherwise, just another follow-up?
No, thanks. It's okay from my decision.
The next question comes from Tobias Kastenhuber, Discover Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for taking my question. It's regarding gross margin. We've seen a 200 basis point decline in gross margin in H1 compared to the prior year, and you mentioned that's due to a weaker product mix. Can you give us some color on the gross margin you expect for H2 2023 compared to H1 2023? Like, do you expect a further decline? And, if yes, which degree do you expect that decline?
I, I can take this. Yes, we continue to see a further change in product mix, and based on the current knowledge, we see a further decline in the gross margin, due to a change in the product mix.
Can you give us some, some color on which degree you see that? Is it like another 200 basis point decline compared to H1, or is it even more severe?
Well, Yeah, I, I understand the background of your question. We provide the guidance on EBIT and EBITDA, I, I, I cannot provide any numbers on the gross margin at this point in time.
Okay, just one, one follow-up, like, long-term gross margins. Where, where do you see the, the gross margin in the longer term? Is it like, the average of the past years around 45, 46, or is it rather in the, in the higher forties we've seen in 2022?
I mean, our, our ambition is very clear, and the, the, this we showed during the Capital Market Day 2022. Now we see that we have some work to be done. I would on, on those really long-term questions, which also need a comprehensive view, not just a, a look on the gross margin. I would like to ask you to join our Capital Market Day, where we will give an update on the overall strategy, not just a specific long-term KPI.
Okay. Thanks a lot, and good luck for the second half.
Thank you.
Okay, before we take the next question, for those who are connected on the phone, you can ask a question if you press star one, four. Okay? Next question on the queue is from Daniel Lion, Erste Group. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for letting me on as well. I would be more interested, maybe you mentioned it on, on your prepared remarks already, but, maybe more detail on the end market dynamics. Do you see differences in automotive and, compared to industrials? And what, what submarkets, might see some, this slowdown that's, that is reflected now in the guidance that you provide, and, and, and stealing of the visibility, going forward?
Well, automotive is, on the one hand, not so homogeneous as it sounds like. I would say nowadays it falls in two categories. One is more the EVs, one is more the traditional ICE cars. Obviously, we are dependent on two things here in the automotive industry. First of all, how does the overall market develop? Second, how much electronic content is there? Now, especially the automotive industry suffered a lot under the supply constraints, and therefore, there was a pretty big order backlog, obviously, as we know now, which was then covered in the first half of 2023. We need now to observe very carefully when this order backlog is consumed and pure structural growth continues.
On the industrial side, the market is very heterogeneous. There you have, indeed, some pockets, where, where some of our customers are still limited in, in, in supply from very special parts, so those are small pockets, but they still exist. There you have, pockets like, home healthcare, where there was a very strong demand during COVID times, and also a catch-up effect, because a lot of people painfully recognized that it's absolutely crucial to have sufficient equipment and sufficient buffer stock. There's now a bit, as, a slowdown, which we experience, which we already see in our, our books.
Other markets, like industrial, automation, there I would say, on the one hand, on the long term, we are absolutely convinced it's a very nice market, the market will need our products, the customers appreciate us, and we've been designed. On the other hand, in the current situation, where economic development in many countries is not as bright as some of us hoped, or at least I hoped, there's much more careful investing in there. This makes it so difficult right now, to make a prediction over this year and beyond.
Okay, thanks. We have follow-up on that, and industrial IoT market, how is the discussion going on with your clients? You know, we are seeing that many projects are simply shifted. Nobody can really afford to cancel digitalization projects in this area. What does this mean? Is this? Are we talking about shifts of one, two quarters? Do the clients obviously have a view themselves when they want to restart investing again and following up on maybe started projects? How's the discussions in this field?
Yeah, you, you, you perfectly described the, the, the situation. There's no doubt that we will do certain things on the mid and long term, neither from our customers nor, nor from us. Yeah. What they struggle with is what is happening in the next few quarters. Our customers literally have the same problem as, as, as us, at least in many cases. Let's say, what we experienced during this, this, this regular update of our guidance, which we, we, we, we did recently. Of course, we went to many customers and really drilled very deep and, and, and, and then found out that in many cases, they don't know themselves, and we had to rely on the data, what we can assume, which will be realistic.
There, one important piece is obviously orders, because orders gives you a very clear indication, and therefore, again, to repeat this point, we found out pretty late, unfortunately.
Okay, thanks. One, one last one on the automotive sector. When I understood correctly, you mentioned that, that there's some, some, some inventory, or some de-stocking going on, now towards the H2. What gives you the confidence to see this revising in the Q4? Is this actually the level of inventories that, that you currently have compared to previous call-offs? Or what's, how do you assess this, this, this development or this view?
It's the order situation. We can, like it or not, inventory level of customers are typically kept very secret due to very obvious tactical reasons, so it's very tough to get a real fact-based insight. There is a, let's say, an approximation or an indicator, and, and these are the orders. There, as, as I explained, if we look at our current business, we see an, an uptake in the... or an improvement in the Q4 again.
Perfect. Thanks a lot.
That was the, the final question, so Stephan, back to you for the closing.
Okay, thank you for the participation, and also thank you for all the questions. All of them were valid, so you, and I appreciate that you dive so deep in our company. We will be doing some road shows in the next weeks, so if you are interested in meeting us, please let us know. For any further questions, don't hesitate to contact our investor relations team. Thank you and goodbye.